anna

I have this friend. The way we met, the role she has played in my life has all been so miraculous.

She had a birthday yesterday so it got me thinking about her.

The way we met is weird. All God (and my mom, she usually has something to do with amazing things in my life,too!). No other way to explain it.

We were living in Kansas. I was very pregnant with The Princess and Steve took a job in Missouri. We decided to sell a lot of our furniture so we listed it in the local newspaper.

Some people came to look at it. My mom was there showing it to them and like always, she started talking to them, telling them about where we were moving. Turns out, their son grew up with a guy who happens to live in this same small town in Missouri that we were moving to. This guy has a wife and a couple small kids, and they go to a great church.

These people buy our furniture and say they'll give our phone number to these old friends of their son's, who they think live in this small town in Missouri.

Are you seeing how much of a reach this is?!

Well a couple months later I get a call from this guy who says an old friend's parents just looked him up and sent him my phone number. So he decided to call and tell me all about this awesome church they go to and invite us to have dinner with them since we were now living in this small town with them.

I was dumbstruck.

Why is this complete stranger doing this? We had no connection to these people. I had a 2-year-old little boy, a 6-week-old little girl and a husband who was gone all day at work. I was sitting at home doing absolutely nothing except planning when I could go back "home" to Kansas and see all the people I loved.

It was a hard time.

Then this stranger calls and invites us to meet his family for dinner at a local restaurant. So we did. It's not like we had anything better to do! (My friend told me later that they had talked about inviting us to their house for dinner, but instead decided on a restaurant since they had no idea if we'd be freaks. And if we were freaks, they didn't want us knowing where they lived. Good thinking!).

We met and had an okay time. It wasn't earth shattering, just a nice time with a new family.

They invited us to church and we eventually went with them. We liked it a lot and never even visited anywhere else. We eventually joined, had The Princess dedicated there, became involved in adult and children's programs and met everyone we came to know—including another lifelong friend of mine—through that church.

But that stranger, who we can now call Josh, and his wife, Anna, went out of their way time and time again to make us feel welcome.

Anna began inviting me to things that she was doing with her friends. She called and asked me to go shopping one day with her and I just couldn't imagine why she would want to take me along when she could take any number of her other friends and have a much better time!

Now I'm pretty fun, I'm not knocking myself, but at this point in my life I was pretty self-conscious and in a brand new place where I wasn't exactly putting myself out there to make it better.

So it was big of her to do it. To think of me and actually follow through with being Christ to me.

She has come to teach me many, many more things through her always-growing testimony. She's an amazing mom and wife, a fun, trustworthy friend and she has a God-given gift to reach out to people and make them feel comfortable.

She had the strength and grace to go out of her way to love me before she even knew how awesome I was! :) And she's done it to many others along the way.

She made such an impact in my life.

We moved out of Missouri and back to Kansas a couple years later and it was awful to leave. Because of Josh and Anna we had established a solid foundation in a church and I had many close friends.

When Steve took a job back in Kansas it was actually harder for me to move back there than it had been for me to move to Missouri in the first place. I fought it with everything in me.

It wasn't my highest point. Maybe I'll get into that sometime.

But Anna was there, too. Crying and praying for us as we learned that we'd be moving.

Through all the ups and downs of moving there and moving out of there, Anna was my constant. I had Steve, but I needed a girlfriend and Anna was that from the very first weeks we moved there.

I'll never be able to explain how much Anna changed my life and changed who I am today. She's made me more aware of those around me, though I still struggle to recognize a need and I definitely struggle to make it a priority to make someone new feel welcome. But thanks to Anna I at least know I can be better at it.

One of my favorite things about this friend is that she is the biggest cry baby you'll ever meet. She cries at happy things, cries at sad things, cries at scary things. I love it and I love laughing at her for it.

When Anna and her family moved last year I prayed so hard that she would find an Anna in her new town. She made all the difference for me and I hope some day I can be in tune enough to make that difference for someone else.

I thank God all the time that he put you in my life. Thank you for being you! I miss you more than you know! Happy Birthday!

I'm posting this picture from a couple years ago because it's so funny and she'll be so annoyed that I put it up! :)

This one is from last year when we met up for a girl weekend!